And then Robin leaned forward.
No preamble. No warm up. Just Robin, direct and clear and saying exactly what she meant the way she always did.
"I dare say," she started, "that this performance is among the most technically accomplished vocal performances I have ever witnessed on the LEAVEN stage."
The team erupted before she even finished the sentence — jumping, grabbing each other, the joy immediate and physical and completely uncontained — before catching themselves and bowing, deeply, with everything they had.
"And please understand," Robin continued, her voice carrying the weight of someone who chose her words carefully and meant every one of them, "I do not say that lightly. Former trainees who are now lined up for debut — Mika, Monarch, Ryu, Corsair, Nox, Eli — those people have graced this stage. They set a bar that was not easy to clear." She looked at them steadily. "You cleared it."
"THANK YOU!" came back from the whole line, bright and unanimous and full.
"Now." Robin paused. "I don't mean to single anyone out, but — Yen."
Yen blinked. The surprise genuine — not knowing quite what to do with being called forward individually after everything his teammates had just delivered.
"Your voice." Robin said it like a complete sentence. Then apparently decided it wasn't complete enough. "That smooth, warm baritone that can sit in those low, resonant registers and then reach those high notes without losing itself — the versatility of it, the color of it—" She stopped. Shook her head slightly, the way people do when words aren't quite covering it. "Yen, as a vocal junkie — and I say this completely, unapologetically, on the record — your voice is a genuine turn on."
The room detonated.
Dora launched out of her chair.
"AAAAAAAAAAAA—"
"He does have that permanent bedroom speaking voice," Lorelei confirmed, nodding with the calm authority of a woman stating a well-documented fact.
On stage, Yen was blushing. Deeply, thoroughly, all the way down — the warmth of it sitting underneath his beautiful dark ebony skin with its ashy undertone, not announcing itself loudly but absolutely present if you knew where to look. His teammates knew where to look. They were patting him from both sides with the proud, delighted energy of people who had just watched their teammate get vocally complimented in the most Robin way possible.
In the audience, Zen had both hands on Mikko's arm and was vibrating at a frequency that suggested Mikko's structural integrity was no longer guaranteed.
Mikko, if you need assistance, blink twice.
"I said what I said," Robin concluded, settling back with the unruffled composure of a woman who had delivered a verdict and was at peace with it. "Everybody calm down."
She was the only one in the room who was calm.
Which was exactly as it should be.
****
"And Louie," Robin said, and the way she said his name alone made everyone pay attention — that specific Robin tone that meant something real was coming and it deserved to be heard properly.
"I have been doing this for a very long time," she started. "I have coached voices that have gone on to fill stadiums. I have sat in this chair and heard things that genuinely stopped me in my tracks." She paused. "What you did tonight stopped me in my tracks."
Louie blinked.
"Those runs on the chorus — the control, the texture, the way you moved through those registers without losing a single drop of tone quality — that is not something that can be fully taught. That lives in you." She leaned forward slightly. "But what really got me was the second belt. 'Can't seem to find the path ahead.' You went up there and you stayed there and you meant every single note of it." Her voice softened just slightly. "I could hear everything you've been carrying in that belt, Louie. Everything you went through, everything that brought you back here — it was all in that one moment."
The room had gone very quiet.
"Welcome back," Robin said simply. "You were missed."
Louie pressed his lips together hard. The tears didn't ask permission this time.
"Now," Robin said, "I would also like to make a special mention of Toma and Jeremiah."
This caught Toma off guard.
It caught Jeremiah — the man who had performed an entire cinematic rain sequence without blinking — genuinely, completely off guard. The diva had not seen this coming. Which, for Jeremiah, was a remarkably rare situation.
"The moment the two of you created on that stage," Robin said, and her voice had shifted — still steady, still Robin, but carrying something underneath it now, something personal and real, "has given every person still sitting in their closet somewhere a little more strength. A little more permission. To come out. To be free. To explore who they are without shame." She paused. "I just wish that the freedom you all have today existed in our time too." A small, genuine smile. "But seeing you be bold enough to just — be yourselves? I know my wife and I are very, very happy seeing it."
The room went quiet.
Not the bad kind. The processing kind.
The collective huh? was visible on approximately every face present.
Dora, notably, looked like she had been waiting for this moment for some time and was savoring every second of it.
Robin, apparently registering that she may have skipped some context, added — with the unbothered ease of someone stating something that had always simply been true —
"Yes. I'm happily married to the woman sitting right there."
She gestured with her thumb.
Toward Lorelei.
The room exploded.
Four months. LEAVEN had been running for four months. Four months of training, evaluations, eliminations, breakdowns, breakthroughs, and Robin and Lorelei standing side by side in this program — and nobody had known. Not because they hid it exactly. Not because they were ashamed of it. Just because work was work, and during work hours they were coaches first, and the trainees had only ever seen them during work hours.
Dora had known the entire time, obviously. Because Dora always knows. That is simply how Dora operates.
The internet was, predictably, not handling this calmly.
@CaliforniaMaki: I feel so seen right now 😭😭😭😭
↳ @Rule_Breaker: 🏳️🌈 WAVING THE FLAG! Long live gays! Long live lesbians! Long live bis! Long live everyone in between — y'all are too many and I only have so many characters left but know that I see you and I love you! 😘
↳ @Malory: LEAVEN is woke trash—
↳ @Rumi: nobody asked. nobody will ever ask. goodbye.
↳ @hells_swarm: Malory has been having the worst month of their internet life and it's entirely self inflicted I'm crying 😭
↳ @404BrainNotFound: Robin said "my wife" on a global stream with the same energy she uses to critique breath support and I have never respected anyone more
In the audience, Zen's hands were already on his phone, typing at a speed that suggested significant emotional investment. He finished, turned the screen to Mikko immediately.
Mikko read it.
Pressed his lips together very hard.
"They are Lebanese?"
He was trying. He was genuinely, visibly, physically trying not to laugh out loud.
"No, Olaf," he managed, with great effort. "Lesbians."
Zen turned to him with the kitty glare. Small. Pointed. Deeply unintimidating. He typed furiously and shoved the phone back.
"I KNOW that, dummy! That was the spell checker's fault! I was typing fast!"
"Okay, okay," Mikko said, the grin spreading across his face in that specific, deeply aggravating, completely unstoppable way. The grin. The shit-eating, slap-inviting, annoyingly wide grin of a man who had found something funny and intended to live in it for as long as possible. "Whatever you say, snowflake."
Zen stared at him.
Somewhere in the room, the celebrations continued.
Zen was calculating something.
****
Cat, recognizing that the atmosphere was approximately three seconds from floating away entirely, grabbed it by the scruff of the neck with the practiced grace of someone who had been doing this her whole life.
"And Lorelei," she said, in that voice — that specific, expensive, posh voice that sounded like it had been educated somewhere that charged per syllable. Giving Prada. Giving breakfast at Tiffany's. Giving vacation to Mars first class with champagne on arrival. "Any words for these young men?"
Lorelei smiled.
"You all did wonderfully," she said, "but Timmy has always had a very special place in my heart."
Timmy's smile went wide and immediate — the involuntary kind that arrives before the person decides to have it. His teammates were already on him from both sides, pats on the back, hands ruffling his hair, the warm chaos of people who were genuinely happy for someone they genuinely liked.
"On the outside," Lorelei continued, "you have always been that endearingly awkward kid who is just genuinely happy to be here. And there is nothing wrong with that. But when you unleash that rapsona—" she paused, "—you become someone else entirely. The bars you construct, the verses you weave, the rhymes you build from nothing — during classes, during training, you have shown me consistently that you are so much more than just Timmy." Her voice landed on the last part with quiet intention. "You are Timothy."
"PERIOD!" Dora hollered from her chair. "Mmmm child! That was POETIC! You ate that speech!"
"I'll admit I had a moment," Lorelei said, with a small, satisfied smile.
Timmy still had that same awkward shy smile. The one that lived permanently on his face and had become as much a part of him as his rapsona was the opposite of it. But his eyes — his eyes were bright and shiny and doing something that the smile was working very hard to contain.
It hit in the meow meow. Deeply. Precisely. Right there.
"Once again — all of you were absolutely remarkable tonight," Lorelei said warmly. "Keep it up." She paused, the smile shifting slightly. "Oh, and Johnny—"
Johnny looked up.
"You are the finest hype man this program has ever produced. Congratulations on being the official poster child of boy failures everywhere. It is a distinguished title and you have earned it."
"THANK YOU, QUEEN!" Johnny said, with the enormous, unguarded grin of Johanson Percival Philippe the Third fully at peace with exactly who he was.
Cat swept them offstage with the efficient warmth of someone who loved these people and also needed the program to continue existing, and the team disappeared backstage — damp, exhausted, beaming, and in desperate need of towels.
Backstage, towels were distributed. Wet hair was being addressed. Someone had located dry clothes. The general process of returning to being human after being rained on for an entire performance was underway.
"Yow, guys."
Johnny's voice. Getting everyone's attention the way it always did — easy, natural, like it belonged there.
Everyone turned, expecting Johnny things. The grin. The hype energy. Whatever chaotic, lovable, fundamentally Johnny thing was coming next.
But the person who spoke wasn't quite Johnny.
It was Johanson.
And that, somehow, was immediately obvious to everyone in the room.
"I just wanted to say thank you." He said it simply, without setup, without performance. "I'm very self-aware of what I bring and what I don't. And I know that on this team, I'm at the bottom of the lineup. I know that."
Yen opened his mouth.
Johanson lifted one finger. Gently. Firmly.
"Please. Let me have this."
Yen closed his mouth.
Johanson took a breath. The weak smile of someone fighting their own emotions and choosing to keep going anyway.
"I got carried. I know I got carried. The praise I received tonight — I wouldn't have any of it without every single one of you. I knew you were being considerate when you let me be leader. I had very little to give except fun and energy and you let me be exactly that." He wiped his nose. "So I really, genuinely appreciate you all."
He wiped the tears that had escaped before he could catch them. And then — like slipping back into a familiar coat — the Johnny smile returned. Warm and wide and exactly itself.
"Okay. You can go."
Nobody moved.
"That is going to sound strange," Yen said, "but you were genuinely the only viable option for leader." He ticked it off. "Jeremiah would have made everything bedazzled and chaotic. Toma would have stayed very quietly in his own head. Timmy—" he glanced at Timmy with affection, "—we love you, but we wouldn't have finished anything."
Timmy nodded agreeably. This was fair.
"Louie has too many ideas and no filing system for any of them," Yen continued.
"HEY—" Louie started.
"You sleep through five alarms," Toma said, with the flat calm of someone presenting documented evidence. "We had to physically dump water on you to get you up this morning. Meanwhile Johnny had already run several miles and was waking the rest of us up."
Louie opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Had nothing.
"And I," Yen said, "am too much of a perfectionist. If I were leader we also wouldn't finish anything and I would spend the entire time brooding and dragging the mood into the floor." He looked at Johnny steadily. "You are the balance of all of us. That is not nothing. That is actually very specific and very hard to be."
"Yeah man," Toma said. "You pulled your own weight. You got here because you earned it." He paused. "I appreciate Johanson coming out, I do — but he kind of creeped me out a little, honestly. Just be Johnny. Everyone loves Johnny. Boy failures everywhere look up to you. You're their patron saint."
"Why," Johnny said, smile still perfectly intact, one eye twitching slightly, "do I have this overwhelming urge to smack you in the head right now."
"The coffee," Jeremiah said, from somewhere behind them, in a tone that brooked absolutely zero delay. "That speech was very moving and I don't care. I still want my double custard cream iced mocha latte." A pause. Something shifted almost imperceptibly in his expression — softer, quieter, there and gone. "You kinda ate tonight though. I guess."
From Jeremiah, that was a standing ovation.
Johnny knew it. Felt it. Let it land somewhere warm.
"YAY JOHNNY!" Timmy said, with the specific energy of someone whose emotional vocabulary lived mostly in exclamation points and genuine enthusiasm.
"Aw, thanks Timmy," Johnny said, hooking an arm around his shoulders easily.
And so Yen, Jeremiah, Louie, Toma, Johanson Percival Philippe the Third, and Timothy lived happily ever after.
At least for the rest of that evening, and through the entirety of Sunday.
Because Monday?
Monday, they do it all over again.